We Need A Detective

Did you know that the Edgar County Sheriff Department doesn’t have an actual Detective? They haven’t had one for quite some time.

Edgar County used to have two detectives on the roster. Now they don’t even have one. The current policy is to have the Deputies investigate their own crimes.

This is bad policy for a number of reasons. It’s not that the road Deputies aren’t capable, because they certainly are. But often, the Deputy is the only one on duty, and responsible for answering other calls, like domestics, or active alarms.

So the burglary or follow up drug investigation gets pushed to the back burner. Then they have to stay over to investigate, or turn it over to the next Deputy, who in turn has to answer their own calls. This drives the overtime up, and makes productivity suffer.

Check with any other Sheriff’s department. It’s standard to have at least one Detective. When a crime occurs, a Deputy will take the initial report, and turn it over to a Detective, who follows up, investigates, and puts a case together. But ECSD doesn’t have one.

The detective should also work more closely with other jurisdictions. Criminals and drug dealers cross county lines all the time. Case in point, a recent individual with active warrants for burglary eluded officers in the Kansas area.

You may recall I wrote about this case last week. According to the Prairie Press: “Wood estimated it took the sheriff’s department approximately an hour to reach the scene.”

In this case, the suspect got away and was ultimately picked up in Indiana. Fortunately, he made a mistake and was caught, but it illustrates how the bad guys work across not only the county line, but the state line, too.

Edgar County used to participate in a multi jurisdictional task force. We even had our own county wide drug task force, but that was eight years ago! Don’t you think it’s time we get back to it?

We CAN make a difference if we work smarter, which means we need a full time, dedicated Detective. The ECSD also needs to work much more closely with other agencies to track the activities of known burglars and drug dealers.

I will be a working Sheriff, too, and I’ll do everything I can, daily, to make this happen quickly and efficiently. You have my word on it.